


Nelumbo nucifera

by montysaurus



Category: DCU, Teen Titans, Young Justice
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - High School, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-27
Updated: 2014-03-01
Packaged: 2018-01-13 23:02:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1243816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/montysaurus/pseuds/montysaurus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tim is suddenly orphaned, and his closest living relative is a maiden aunt living in Smallville. This is a story of overcoming grief, learning to live in a new home, and learning to love new people. And Conner Kent. Yes, him.</p>
<p>-Updates without seeing any new chapters means that I corrected stupid errors I didn't see earlier. I need a beta reader I think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Prologue**

It was a bright sunny day, rare for Gotham, especially in the spring. Tim had come home from school in a good mood, a rare smile on his lips. His parents should have gotten in from their trip around lunchtime. He couldn't wait to show his mother the A he got in art class for his photo essay. He had started working on it on Christmas day, when his mother had given him a new camera as a Christmas present. It was a sunny afternoon in Gotham, and the sky seemed to glow with a bright blue haze as the car drove along the driveway to the Drake manor. Tim darted out of the car as soon as it came to a stop, giving the driver a quick 'thank you' before racing to the front door. His mother would normally wait in the Magnolia room for him when she just got back from a long trip, lounging elegantly on her favorite loveseat, with a present in hand for her baby boy.

Tim burst through the door into the Magnolia room, and looked around expectantly. Instead of his mother, he saw the housekeeper sitting at a chair, sniffing into a handkerchief, while a sober looking man in a suit rubbed her back, trying to console her. The bright daylight made the wallpaper come alive, and the room was filled with a lovely pink glow. The open windows brought a fragrant breeze in from the gardens, filling the room with the scent of flowers and grass. The room was truly beautiful, but Tim felt a buzzing in his ears. Something was wrong. Mrs Jennings looked up, and upon seeing Tim, she burst into new tears. The man in the suit looked up at Tim, his face was grim, a deep sadness in his eyes. He recognized this man. Mr Cohen often came to his dinner parties his parents would host, he was a lawyer, and quite a famous one.

They got Tim to sit down, and they broke the news. The words coming out of Mrs Jennings in between bouts of sniffs and sobs. His parents had been in a plane crash. There were no survivors. Mr Cohen was here to see to their wishes regarding Tim's welfare and custody. An old maiden aunt of his, from his mother's side, was flying in from a town somewhere in the Midwest. After the memorial service, the plan was for Tim to fly back to live with her. His parents, like him, had had no siblings. She was his closest living relative, and his parents' wishes were for him to live with her.

He asked to be excused, and walked, dazed, to his parents room. He lay in their bed, face against the pillows and breathed in. He could still smell them, his mother's perfume, his father's cologne, like ghosts in the room with him. A photo of them, all three of them, sat on the side table on his mother's side. It had been taken by a helpful stranger when they were on vacation in Rome. It had been a sunny day, as bright as this one, and their smiles had shone just as brightly. It was a sunny spring day in Gotham, and Tim would never see his parents again.


	2. It's really Chapter One. I don't know how to make it not say that.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> OK, so in this AU I made up in my mind, Tim found out Robin's secret as a child just like in canon. Unlike canon, Stephanie Brown became the third Robin after Jason. I just find it more appealing that after two brunette orphans there's a blonde girl with a villainous father instead of more of the same. Tim is just as intelligent as in canon, he has as much martial arts and gymnastics training that a rich kid in the city could have access to, but without the bat-training he's no Red Robin in this story. Well, not yet anyway, I'm thinking about him eventually joining the Bat family somehow. My romance plot is solid in my head, but the heroes/villains plotline not so much. Priorities amirite? LOL

**Chapter One**

Smallville High was a surprisingly large high school for such a small town,Tim soon learned that students bussed in from surrounding smaller towns. All the better for him to get lost in the crowd and hide. Coming to Smallville with Aunt Joyce was something he hated, but there were no other alternatives. The town was small and insular, everyone knew him as ‘That Drake Boy’, he could hear their whispers when he’d go into town to get something. It made him want to yell at them, but he knew that was the last thing he needed to do right now. His world had gone quiet, at least, even quieter than usual, and Tim was just fine with that thank you very much.

He had his own room at Aunt Leah’s house, it wasn’t as big or as extravagant as his set of rooms at the Drake manor, but it was sufficient. He didn’t own many things he was very attached to, a lot of things sat in storage, but he made sure to keep the last camera his mother gave him, his photo album of his parents in happier times, and the Box. The Box was where Tim kept pictures and newspaper articles of Batman and his friends. Tim Drake, an utterly normal (if wealthy) kid from Gotham, knew who Batman was. It was his childhood obsession with Dick Grayson, or as he called himself while on patrol “Nightwing”, that lead him to unravel a secret that legions of super-villains had failed to discover. Once he figured that out, it wasn’t  too difficult to deduce who Batman was, and from there to notice Clark Kent’s unusual chumminess with Bruce Wayne that could only be explained by him being Superman.

Before the accident, half a lifetime ago it seemed, Tim guarded these secrets jealously, luxuriating in forbidden knowledge like a dragon would it’s hoard of gold. He had felt so powerful, so adult knowing something that was such a huge deal. Now he knew better. Knowing things, even incredible secrets, didn’t mean anything. A life was a life, fragile and easily destroyed, whatever the person might have known or done, death waited always, close by. He knew he was in Superman’s home town, and he knew a certain Superboy attended Smallville High with him, but that knowledge failed to foster any feelings in him whatsoever. These were just bare facts, he saw little relevance they could pose to his own life.

Aunt Leah was a kindly plainspoken salt-of-the-earth farmer’s wife, widowed for more than a decade. She was in the autumn of her life, and tended to her flower garden, book club meetings and little else. She had tried her best, in her own blunt way, to make Tim as comfortable as he could be here in Smallville, and Tim felt grateful yet guilty, resenting his imposition on her. She was to be his legal guardian till he turned eighteen, still three long years away.  She eyed Tim kindly now, as they sat at the breakfast table. A month in, conversations were still awkward, but getting less so week by week. She just had to keep working on her quiet, shy ward.

“Are we running low on cornflakes, dear? I’m going into town today and I could pick some up if we’re low.”

“No thank you Aunt Leah, we’re good.”

“Any exciting news today?”, she asked.

“Not particularly, no.”

Tim looked down at his newspaper and continued on with his breakfast. Aunt Leah regarded him calmly, he would come out of his shell when he was ready. She just hoped it would be sometime soon. She remembered seeing Tim on his fifth birthday, though he couldn't remember her, and Janet had sent pictures of him every Christmas. He had been such a happy child, timid and a bit shy true, but curious and good-natured as well. She hoped one day he would emerge from under the dark clouds and show the same spark he had as a child.

Tim caught the bus to school, at first it had thrown him for a loop, travelling to school in a noisy, cramped space, but now he didn't even notice it. The bus pulled into Smallville High’s huge bus bay, buses from neighboring small towns also coming in to disgorge their loads of students, like ships in port. Students chattered happily all around him, he could hear snatches of conversations about crushes, video games, chores and teachers. Life was happening all around him, but he was content to walk quietly on his own, sliding his compact frame through the crowd till he got to his locker. He had been a student here for three weeks, yet it still felt a but unreal. He felt like his life was a paused video, this was just an intermission till he could get back to Gotham and start living life again. At least, he hoped that’s what he could do.

Class was class, whether it was full of rich city kids or farmers kids. He did his best to sit in the back or sides of his classes and not draw attention to himself. Kids were friendly to him, reaching out to the new kid, inviting him places, but he kept a wall of reserve between him and them. Anything could happen, and it would make all the effort meaningless. Meaningless, meaningless, all is meaningless. He had come to understand that better than ever in his new life. His eyes were open now. He shared a few classes with Connor Kent. Before he would have been incredibly excited to go to the same school as Superboy. He would have gotten a rush out of knowing something that no one else knew. Now it was just another fact of life, like the sky being blue or the cows on the farms neighboring his aunt’s house being smelly.

The first four periods ran together, classroom, schoolmates, lessons, Tim knuckled down and engrossing himself in work. It helped, school was a welcome refuge from thinking about things. Thinking about life, about his parents and how much he missed them. At lunch, Tim took his tray of food and found an empty table on the side of the courtyard outside the cafeteria. As he sat eating, he browsed through the Gotham Gazette website on his smartphone. Even now, he still couldn't help himself from reading as much as he could about Nightwing and his Bat family. He found an article about a human trafficking ring that had been broken with the assistance of Batman, fifty-one women and children had been retrieved from the warehouse they were being kept in-

“Hey! Mind if I join you?”

Tim looked up at the source of the interruption, and looked into the deep blue eyes of Connor Kent. Connor was holding his lunch tray gingerly, slouching in a plaid shirt that seemed too big for him, a pretty remarkable achievement. He seemed almost uncomfortable with his bulk, like he wished he could be smaller and less noticeable. Tim was at a loss for what to say.

“It’s alright, I’ll go find somewhere else to-“.

“No, I don’t mind! Please sit.”

As Connor sat down, Tim regarded him with a calm stare. He didn’t know what to say, here was a teenage superhero sitting opposite him, and nobody in the school but Tim knew that. Would he try to make small talk? What would Tim say? Would he accidentally blurt out something he wasn't supposed to know?


End file.
